An Ugly yet Beautiful World
by angelswings217
Summary: After an accident in her home town, Audrey Spero moved to New York City. She lives a secluded life surfing the internet. She hears a rumor about a mysterious program that someone is sending to people's phones. From there on her life is forever changed.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! This is going to be my first Shin Megami Tensei fiction. Now just a warning to those of you that are into the game because of its bleak nature: I'm not Stephen King. What I'm trying to say is that this will have the concept of the games, but will be nowhere **_**near**_** as dark. Don't get me wrong; this is going to be intense, and there are going to be moments that show the worst in people. Enjoy. **

**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing pertaining to Shin Megami Tensei. Please support the official release. **

**An Ugly yet Beautiful World**

Chapter One

The Beginning

**XxxEnd01xx: I'm telling you! It's freaky!**

_Some people have weird pennames…_

**Shader54: You're giving me the creeps. **

She decided to join in.

**Autumo: What are you guys talking about?**

** Shader54: End here thinks that there's some dude on the net sending people free apps. **

** Autumo: LOL! That might not be normal, but it doesn't really qualify as 'strange.' Maybe he's just trying to build up the hype for the new and improved version of the app?**

** XxxEnd01xx: It's not that he's giving away free apps! It's what the apps DO!**

** Autumo: Which is…?**

** XxxEnd01xx: I...**

It took a moment for him to continue his reply.

**XxxEnd01xx: Don't really know. **

** Autumo: And how do you know there's something weird about these apps then?**

** XxxEnd01xx: There's this weird stuff on the message boards about it; a lot of people have claimed to have gotten this app. Then they flat out stop posting. Like they vanished. **

** Shader54: Shut up.**

** Autumo: Shut up as in 'Oh my God!' or as in 'be quiet'?**

** Shader54: As in be quiet. **

** XxxEnd01xx: Hey!**

** Autumo: I'd appreciate it if we avoided starting fights in my chat room.**

** Shader54: You're a loser, End! **

** Autumo: Shader!**

** XxxEnd01xx: Shader54, What's your problem?**

** Shader54: XxxEnd01xx, You're my problem!**

She didn't hesitate to click under Shader54's avatar and then click "BLOCK USER."

**SHADER54 HAS BEEN BLOCKED**

** XxxEnd01xx: Thanks Autumo. **

** Autumo: No prob. I hate it when people go around doing stupid stuff like starting fights. GTG. See you later. **

Audrey still had some time before she had to go to school. She wasn't sure what to do, so she checked her phone. One new text message.

_Taking care of some last minute details with the move. Won't be home until late. _

_Love, Mom. _

They wouldn't have to move if she hadn't been so naïve.

She slipped on the red plaid skirt, tightened the red tie, buttoned the blue blazer, and pulled up her navy blue knee socks. The only thing she was wearing that wasn't dress code was her footwear. The stupid dress shoes the school required the girls to wear nearly caused her feet to bleed at one point. She was wearing solid white Converse.

Audrey put her laptop, along with her school books, into her backpack and left the house. Her street looked like every other residential city street; it was nothing but a bunch of fancy old townhouses. Once she turned the corner the landscape went from a simple residential area, to a true bustling New York City street. There was honking, numerous pedestrians, and countless commercial buildings that reached up to the heavens.

_This day seems so much like any other_, she thought. So many people, so many different paths, so many different dreams, all crammed into the same city, all trying to make their ideals and needs come first.

She didn't know whether to find it awe-inspiring, bewildering, or sickening.

(…)

In her opinion, Audrey's school was awkwardly placed. It was wedged between two large office buildings; the football field was small and had less surrounding open area than in any school Audrey had ever seen. The track team had to take a bus over to a community center for their track. Aside from these characteristics and the fact that it had several more floors than the average school, Eastern Private High School was built like any smaller high school.

Audrey walked into the building, blending in with most of the other students. In most schools, children would put their MP3 players and phones away the moment they walked through the doors; Eastern High was different because, so long as you weren't in the middle of class, phones and MP3 players were completely regulation.

They day droned on like any other normal day. One class was all discussion; one was all note taking, and the one _truly_ hands-on class of design engineering. It was the one class Audrey always looked forward to. Audrey was really creative and she was always the first student to come up with a good final design. The guidelines for the projects were never very strict and she could build such amazing devices. Sure half the time they were made out of wood, foam, glue, and tape, but she was always proud of herself when her machine wound up working in the end. There were only two factors she didn't like about the class: she was the only girl in the room, and there were a lot of dangerous potential weapons that were very easy to access.

After her design engineering class came lunch. Audrey didn't really have anyone to sit with, so she always grabbed her lunch as fast as she could, made her way to the roof, and bounced between eating pizza and cookies while surfing the web on her phone. There, the sounds and smells of the city were more distant and ghostly.

Today was one of the few days where she didn't know what to do on the internet. Audrey almost wound up simply eating her lunch and wasting the rest of the lunch away by zoning out. Then she remembered something…

_End here thinks that there's some dude on the net sending people free apps_**.**

_Some dude on the net sending people free apps…_

That didn't seem like a half bad way to pass by an extra fifteen minutes. Audrey decided to do several searches.

_Free app giveaway_ gave her a bunch of contests to win large sums of money for iTunes apps—all of them clearly fake.

_Mysterious app_ brought up a bunch of internet articles warning people about apps that you could get off of third party sites that could make everything on your phone accessible to hackers.

She tried several different searches, and Audrey was about to give up, when she tried one last search in the last few minutes of lunch.

_App phantom_

The page was all red with some black text and had two choices:

**BYSTANDER**

OR

**CHOOSE YOUR FATE**

The site seemed like something that any random person who spent ten minutes on a website that taught people how to make their own websites. All it took was a computer program that most computers already came installed with and codes that any one person could copy and paste. Audrey thought that it was clearly a viral site some amateur hacker was using to learn how good he or she was at getting to other people's information.

The bell rang.

Audrey jumped and scrambled to get her things together. The woman that taught her next class automatically gave students afterschool detentions for tardiness. In the mad dash to hide her phone, she accidently pressed something on the site.

**CHOOSE YOUR FATE**

(…)

"Hey Audrey!" Someone called.

It was Alex. He had brown hair in a mop cut and glasses.

"I'm going to the library afterschool and it's in the same direction as your house, so I figured we could walk together?"

Audrey smiled. Alex was one of the few real friends she's had since she moved to New York. They were the two kids left out of most groups for one Design Engineering project, so they decided to work together. From that point on they were good friends.

"Sorry Alex; I'm behind on that solo project so I'm staying after."

"Alright." Alex shrugged and waved her goodbye.

As Audrey fought the flow of students heading home for the day, she walked up the stairs and went up to the Design Engineering room. She dropped her bag by her normal seat as if she were walking into a normal class.

The teacher smiled at her and continued reading his issue of _Architectural Digest_.

Alex took a piece of wood and smoothed it out

(…)

He sat down on a large sofa of the sort that most shrinks would have in their offices. Lying back, he covered his eyes with his right arm and sighed.

"Tell me a story." He said.

Across the room, a woman with flowing silver hair wearing a featureless white dress bowed and took a seat on the floor.

"Where should the story take place?" She asked.

"I think you know." He said with a small chuckle.

She took a breath. "It takes place on the Blue World. The People of this world lived either distant, isolated existences in the countryside, or in towering cities."

"Tell me more." He said.

"The city buildings reached up to the heavens and shined with light. People even had Windows of light that they could use to reach out to people from all over the world, no matter how far away they were. Many even carried these Windows around with them. But something strange was happening with a few of these windows."

"Oh," He sighed.

"These windows could become doors. The person with the Window couldn't go through the Door, but strange things could come out. Everything from fantastic beasts, to fearsome monsters, to powerful weapons like none on the Blue World had ever imagined."

"Who is the main character?" He asked.

The woman thought for a moment. "Our story is about a girl who grew up in the lonely countryside, but recently moved to one of the greatest of the towering cities."

"Why did She move?" He asked.

"You see, She was once a happy girl. While almost everyone looked to the future and saw sorrow, She saw hope and endless possibilities. Not only that, She was very intelligent and had much promise. Her family took pride in all of this. But sadly, one day She bore witness to a terrible tragedy. Her family, not wanting to force her to endlessly mourn, left the countryside for the city in the hopes that this would help her recover."

"So sad." He said.

"She preoccupied herself with the small Window She carried around and her craft work, no longer the same girl and questioning everything She knew. She heard from people that called out to her from their Windows about how the Windows could become Doors. Little did She know, She had turned her Window into a Door."

"Now what happens?" He asked.

"She silently works on her craft, her mind blank, and unaware of the gravity of her situation."

He smiled. "Can we help her become aware?" He asked.

Only it was neither question nor a request. It was an order.

She nodded. "And so our story continues."

(…)


	2. Monster Ed

**An Ugly yet Beautiful World**

Chapter Two

Audrey was smoothing a piece of foam on the sander when the teacher sprang out of his seat. She was so startled that she nearly destroyed a good fifteen minutes of work.

"Audrey. Family emergency. I know you can handle yourself, right?" He asked.

Audrey nodded.

He bolted out the door and shut it behind him. Audrey continued to work silently. She looked at her work and decided that what she had done was enough, but her family wouldn't be home until late, but how long was it until school closed? She took out her phone to check.

**YOU CHOSE YOUR FATE**

Audrey stared at the screen for a moment, completely dumbfounded, until she remembered.

_**BYSTANDER**_

_OR_

_**CHOOSE YOUR FATE**_

Audrey's eyes widened as she realized how stupid she had been. _My phone's probably infected!_ She thought. Frustrated and frantic, she began to pound away at the screen in hopes of seeing that there wasn't anything wrong with it.

For a moment, it remained the same.

**YOU CHOSE YOUR FATE**

_Damn_, Audrey thought.

And then the screen went blank.

Audrey thought for a moment that this was what the virus did, but then the screen went back to normal. Initially she was relieved, but an unsettling thought came over her.

_Yeah, I know what happens next. You get to see anything and everything I do, you stupid hacker. Too bad I don't have anything to hide. _Audrey thought triumphantly. There wasn't any information on her phone that would embarrass her or would be of any use to an identity thief.

But she noticed something odd. There was a new app on her screen.,

_Some dude on the net sending people free apps…_

_No way. There's just no way._ Audrey laughed, she was being so stupid. She looked more closely at the app, expecting to see one that had been installed on her phone for ages. She expected to be grateful that she was alone. The unexpected happened.

She didn't recognize the app.

It was of a strange pentagram-like symbol. The closest thing to an app associated to the occult Audrey had on her phone was her horoscope app.

Startled and with a pounding heart, Audrey looked closely at the strange pentagram. Normally pentagrams were upside-down star-like symbols within rings. This one was within a ring, but it was right side-up. In the ring strange words were written. Audrey had to turn her head, but she read the words _Shin Megami Tensei_.

_Either gibberish or another language_, she thought.

Between the points of the pentagram were odd, undecipherable markings. It was all black and white. It was all very strange.

Audrey felt sick.

Should she click it, or shouldn't she click it? Would she activate some sort of virus? Very few hackers had what it took to use a phone to hack let alone hack into a phone. Most of the warnings about fake apps that Audrey read about earlier were clearly made by amateurs that were simply applying their prior knowledge on suspicious downloads to phones.

Her phone vibrated and Audrey nearly dropped it from fright.

It was only a text message. Audrey calmed herself, embarrassed by the lasting effects of the small adrenaline rush.

YOU'RE IN DANGER

_Of course the number is blocked,_ Audrey thought.

Another message arrived and Audrey accidentally pressed the "open" button instead of the "ignore" button.

YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN GREAT POWER

Audrey arched a brow. This was getting weird. She almost wanted to save the text message so she could show it to Alex later.

THIS POWER IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL

Was this a part of the possibly viral app?

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Audrey snorted. _Definitely_ showing this to Alex. This guy seriously thought that he could freak Alex out like that? Was he one of the obnoxious boys in her Design Engineering course that found her taking the class seriously irritating for some reason? Ugh. Audrey had enough of this.

(…)

_**DO YOU DESIRE MORE POWER?**_

_Yes_, it thought. _Yes, with all of my heart!_

_**CAN YOU FEEL THE HUMAN NEARBY?**_

_I smell that sweet blood!_

_**TAKE**_ _**HIS BODY AND USE IT TO KILL THE FEMALE NEAR HIM!**_

(…)

Audrey turned off her phone, packed her bag, put her work away, and went out the door. She guessed that she would be talking with her chat room buddies earlier than expected. Honestly, there were people out there that really needed to get real lives and do something productive. Why couldn't there be more people like—?

"Audrey!"

Edward Hartley. Tall. Blonde. Toned body. Tanned. Popular. Why was someone like him talking to the new girl?

"Hey Ed," Audrey replied. Everyone just called him _Ed_ instead of his full name.

"Afterschool stuff still goes on for a while. Why're you leaving so soon?"

Audrey turned to look at him and noticed that he was in his Cross Country uniform, towel around his neck. As she walked, he jogged next to her, but backwards.

"I finished what I needed to," she answered.

"So are you doing anything tonight?" Ed asked.

Audrey stopped. So did Ed.

Did he just ask her out? Audrey's heart started to pound. She had always been told that despite her relatively good looks that guys found her no-nonsense personality a turn-off (even though in truth she loved to laugh.) Why would someone so popular that it seemed that he had no enemies want to hang out with a girl, fresh out of the suburbs, like Audrey?

"M-my parents aren't going to be home until late."

"Sweet! Party at your place!" He joked.

Audrey asked him to stop joking about things like that, but that's all it was. He was joking around as if they were good friends. He was just that much of a friendly person. Audrey was a little jealous. She used to be like that…before…

"AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGH!"

(…)

It reached into the heart of the golden-haired human boy. The boy's mind was sickeningly pure and innocent. When it reached the boy's heart he was immediately faced with a wall of pure goodness, but no normal human could fight him off. He broke through the nauseating wall and seized control of the child.

(…)

Ed fell to the ground screaming and thrashing. Audrey dropped her bag and came to his aid.

"Ed! Calm down!" She cried. "Calm down and tell me what's wrong!"

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Ed screamed.

"Ed! Just hold on! I-I-I'm going to call an ambulance!"

Her hands shaking to the point where she could barely grip her phone, Audrey pressed the three numbers that always brought hope to someone in distress.

"What is the nature of your emergency?" A woman calmly said from the other end of the line.

"Y-y-yes! It's my friend! He's on the floor thrashing around and screaming and—"

"I DON'T WANNA KILL!" Ed screamed.

"Having some kind of mental breakdown! We need an ambulance—"

Audrey stopped short. She stopped short because she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe because Ed had gotten up and was strangling her with his bare hands.

"Ma'am, ma'am, I need your location. Please give me your location!" The dispatcher said.

Audrey could only utter a small grunt as she dropped her phone and began to claw at Ed's hands.

Time slowed as Audrey realized that she was in danger. She felt that rush that she hadn't felt since the accident—the rush of adrenaline seeping into her veins. As her body's self-defense mechanisms took effect she was able to think clearly at an incredibly fast rate.

Ed was far more athletic than she was, so clawing away at his hands wouldn't do a thing. However, Ed's stance was strange; he could easily be toppled. To top it all off, Audrey was a large, and her legs had been supporting a large for a very long time now. The legs were more than twice as strong as the arms; in a fight between someone with the strength of an average person's legs versus someone with the strength of an athlete's arms, average legs would win.

Audrey brought her legs up and kicked out at Ed with all her might.

She fell to the ground, gasping and coughing. Ed staggered across the hall gasping in what seemed like gibberish, but Audrey noticed something odd about the curses.

Several languages.

Before the accident, one of Audrey's favorite pastimes was to search the web for cool songs in different languages. She had managed to pick up a few phrases in everything from Japanese, to German, even to Latin. And everyone in the school knew that Ed was terrible at learning new languages; he was so bad that he took the absolute bare minimum foreign language classes required for graduation, barely managing to scrape past with his credits intact.

"Y-you're not," Audrey coughed, "Edward!" She finished with a gasp.

"Smart little human girl, aren'tcha?" Ed said. But it wasn't Ed. His voice was totally different. Deep, dark, and menacing. "I'm borrowing the kid's body for a while. Now sit tight and lemme kill ya!" He cackled.

(…)

The dispatcher both loved and hated her job. She got to help a lot of people out and give them a reassuring, calm voice in their time of need. On the other hand, she heard so many heart-wrenching stories. In a city like New York, she heard everything from wives being beaten, to children calling about their drunken parents, to old husbands begging her to get an ambulance to their seizing wives.

This time was something similar to that. Judging by how the girl described her friend's actions, he was in some kind of seizure—probably epileptic. The city was the last place someone like that should live.

Then the screaming came from the other end of the line. Screaming like that of a madman.

And then it all stopped.

_Damn it, damn it, damn it!_ The dispatcher thought.

It didn't look like she was going to tell the dispatcher where she was.

"I need a trace on a call ASAP!"

(…)

Audrey, phone in hand, had abandoned all of her other possessions and ran for cover.

Deep down, she knew that there was no way that a normal person could take Ed on with the way he was. Dark marks began to appear all over his body. His blue eyes had turned red. Black streaks appeared in his blonde hair. If he was at all human, he had lost at least part of his humanity.

Audrey ran into a small classroom and shut the door behind her, thankful for the automatic locking system most of the doors in the school had.

The monster that Ed had become pounded on the door relentlessly.

Audrey grabbed a desk and pushed it against the door, screaming for the monster to go away.

It was like some horror movie. Terrified, she looked around the room. And there was no exit.

No…

Whenever the victim got caught in a corner or some sort of dead end… in the movies… they _always_ died. Brutally. Painfully. Pathetically. Sadly.

She didn't want to die. Not like this. Not like them. Not like the accident!

Audrey crawled into the corner of the room opposite the door. Her hands were shaking even more than when this entire ordeal had started. She pressed at the screen, stopping to yelp every time the monster managed to make a big crack in the door, never managing to press the right button. Audrey pressed the wrong button, and then had to go back to the home screen, over and over again.

The door broke off its hinges.

"HELLO!" The monster hissed.

Audrey pressed. She didn't press the dial pad button. She pressed the weird app she accidentally downloaded earlier today.

"NO!" The monster wailed as it burst in the door.

Audrey's phone lit up and a strange symbol, seemingly made out of azure light, appeared above the screen; it was made of many geometrical symbols and markings, all rotating above the screen. An orb of light rose from the symbol. As Audrey took hold of it, she gripped a handle and a ring that she put her right index finger through.

A pistol.

It was silver, old fashioned, and coated in ornate markings. The barrel was massive for a handgun—Audrey had seen something like this on TV once before—at least fifty caliber.

The monster leapt at her. Without thinking, Audrey pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

A normal gun would have created a small explosion within the barrel. A normal gun would have recoiled. A normal gun, since Audrey was aiming at the monster's shoulder, would have destroyed the joint without killing the body the monster had taken hold of.

This was no ordinary gun.

Marking similar to the ones that brought the gun into existence surrounded the barrel. There was a massive flash of light. The monster, and Ed, were gone.


	3. Not Alone

**If you people like my writing, heck out my account on the website linked to fanfiction, fictionpress, for completely original stories. I'm adventuresekerX21.**

**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing pertaining to the Megami Tensei franchise. **

**An Ugly yet Beautiful World**

Chapter Three

_You killed me,_ he moaned.

"No I didn't," Audrey wailed. "I didn't know what I was doing! I only wanted to defend myself!"

_Killing only brings about more killing. What will this world become if we only respond to death with more death? Wasn't that what you said?_

"But that was before—!"

_You're still, you. Aren't you?_

"SHUT UP!"

Audrey leapt out of bed, her heart pounding, and looked at the clock. It was 6:40 in the morning. She still had some time to sleep, but after the fourth nightmare she decided to give up and get ready. Not for school. School was closed while the police reviewed the security footage to see if Audrey's story checked out.

Audrey had seen the footage. It didn't disprove her testimony, but it didn't really prove it either.

Rather than showing Ed screaming like a maniac as he was possessed and attacking her, it showed blurs of her running from the moment that Ed started screaming. There were some flashes of a mysterious person pursuing her, but it was so scratchy that no one could tell who it was. The police had even asked Audrey if the suspect had threatened her. She didn't mind that; Audrey read a book like that once. The police officers only wanted to reassure her of her safety, to bring a dangerous person to justice, to do their job. But their "suspect" had been right in front of them. Although legally speaking she hadn't done anything wrong—any lawyer would agree that it was legitimate self-defense.

But that didn't change the fact that Audrey had killed someone.

(…)

Audrey walked amongst the many New Yorkers in the city streets, dressed in a pair of converse sneakers, a black sleeveless hoodie, and a pair of skinny jeans. She blasted music by 30 Seconds to Mars into her ears, drowning out most of the sounds of the city, aside from the ones she needed to hear to avoid getting hit by a car. But as she walked, the constant reports she heard on what had happened still rang in her head along with the music. Stern reporters explaining that "a recent transfer student" had been the only witness—how "the student" said that the "exemplary student" had gone ballistic and attacked her.

_It was self-defense_, Audrey thought.

_Lie awake in bed at night  
And think about your life  
Do you want to be different?  
Try to let go of the truth  
The battles of your youth  
'Cause this is just a game_

_It's a beautiful lie  
It's the perfect denial  
Such a beautiful lie to believe in  
So beautiful, beautiful it makes me_

Audrey ran into a bookstore.

(…)

"Audrey?" Someone called out.

Audrey leapt and nearly dropped the book she had been reading. It clumsily slipped through her fingers and into the air several times before she managed to catch it and place it back on the shelf.

She looked back and saw Alex wearing the name tag that all store employees wore.

"Audrey! I haven't seen you since—!" Alex cut himself off, realizing that he had made a big mistake.

Audrey tried to shake it off. "Y-yeah. I didn't know that you worked here."

"Normally I don't—I'm friends with the manager. He's been a little short handed and with all the free time we've had, I decided to help out."

There was an awkward silence.

"So what were you reading?" Alex asked.

Audrey tried to stop him, but he noticed and there was another awkward pause. Most of the students in school knew that she was the "transfer student" despite the fact that her sudden transfer landed her the position of invisible student. The school had made it clear that Audrey's identity would remain undisclosed and the principle was close friends with a private investigator—one of the best PIs in New York—so no one was going to risk getting suspended just because they couldn't keep his or her mouth shut.

But the students themselves still knew who she was and what she has said about Ed. Ed was one of the few students whose only enemies were those that were jealous of him, and he was always surrounded by too many loyal friends to be approached. In this day and age, demonic possession and people suddenly lashing out without reason or provocation was the subject of bad _Paranormal Activity_ rip-offs, not a serious subject. If school was still in session, Audrey would be the victim of some of the cruelest forms of anonymous bullying.

"Sooooo…have you read the new _Maximum Ride_ book?" Alex quickly said in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

Audrey smiled. Alex knew her. He knew that she wouldn't say such astonishing things, especially about such a good person, unless she really meant it. Alex was a good friend. She was pretty sure that some students had already pestered him for her contacts so that they could just poke some fun at her, but that would lead to the students that hated her with a passion finding a way to get to her outside of school.

"Yeah; I got through it in three days."

"Aw man! I'm still finishing it up!"

(…)

**XxxEnd01xx: How have things been going?**

**Autumo: Not good.**

**XxxEnd01xx: What's up?**

**Autumo: Some complicated stuff. **

**XxxEnd01xx: How complicated?**

**Autumo: School canceled complicated. **

**SHADER 54 HAS ENTERED THE CHAT**

**Shader54: Yo.**

**Autumo: If you're going to start a fight, I will block you right now.**

**Shader54: Don't worry about it. I flipped out then. Sorry. **

**XxxEnd01xx: You're still in school? Lol. **

**Autumo: I'm in the 11****th**** grade!**

**XxxEnd01xx: So close, but so far. **

**Shader54: LOL. I'm in high school, dude. **

**Autumo: So End.**

**XxxEnd01xx: What's up?**

**Autumo: Remember those message boards you were talking about last chat? The one where people post about that app? **

**XxxEnd01xx: What about it?**

**Autumo: Give me a link. **

(…)

The stories were everywhere.

_I just decided to press it, now I have a weird pentagram think on my iPod that won't go away even if I try to delete it. _

Audrey tried to see if she could delete the app out of curiosity. The "X" that she would press to get rid of it didn't appear.

_I'm totally freaking out over here! I don't want to leave my house I'm so scared!_

_This app is freaky, man!  
Does anyone know if there's a way to get rid of it?_

_How does it even work? Sometimes when I press it nothing happens._

_How has this thing not gone viral yet?_

_I'm only here because I'm curious. Does anyone know where I can get the app?_

Audrey breathed a sigh of relief. There was an entire section on a posting website on this _Phantom App_ as it had been deemed. Thanks to this, Audrey knew that she wasn't alone. There were people from all over claiming stories similar to hers. Very few people had been attacked, though. But it was still a relief.

_You guys are a bunch of freaks looking for attention. _

There was already a message under the comment saying that that user had been blocked, but it was still hurtful. This area was only one section on a much larger website, so there were a lot of hate comments from users that came over just to make fun of people with the app.

Aria picked up her copy of _Web Design for Dummies_ and got to work.

She wasn't alone.


	4. Turn of events FIXED IT!

**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing pertaining to the Megami Tensei franchise. **

**An Ugly yet Beautiful World**

Chapter Four

The man adjusted his tie as he sat at the long table. It was unnecessarily long with many extra seats. There was one occupied on the other side of the room, by a man in a black Italian suit and silk tie. He had been ushered in by a secretary at the building—completely unaware of the exchange going on right above her head.

"So I believe that you're aware of the gravity of the situation, Alcester?" A voice called out from the TV. The voice was smooth, deep, and dark. His hair, black as night, was smoothed back in a style that could only be achieved by normal people through greasing. His hair, aside from its shape, showed no signs of product whatsoever.

"Of course, Set. I've sent an agent in to intervene. The job should be done by tonight." Alcester answered.

The man on the other side of the room frowned and leaned his head on his hand. "For your sake I hope you're right."

Alcester sighed and made his way down to his private room. On the other side, the silver-haired woman in the white dress took a small breath.

"Shall we continue with the story?" He asked.

The silver-haired woman nodded and took a breath.

"Little did the people of the Blue World know the Doors were beginning to open up all over the world— and not just through their Windows; Monsters began to come through Hidden Doors. They do awful things—killing for no reason. She was nearly killed by a Monster that came through a Hidden Door. The Monster took control of a boy very close to Her. She feels that in defeating this monster, She had killed an innocent person."

The man chuckled.

"Initially, She cut herself off even further. But She found hope through the many people alike her calling out through their Windows. Now She is beginning to return to Her former self, but She has many more hardships to face."

"Like what?" He asked.

"There are strange things happening in the Great City where She resides, and She can't bring herself to leave those in need of Her help alone."

(…)

"Audrey! It's time for s—"

"Already awake, mom." Audrey said as she slipped on her uniform blazer.

Audrey hugged her mom as the kind woman handed her a cereal bar—Audrey's normal breakfast.

When Audrey's mother went back downstairs, Audrey walked out the door and made her way to school with a smile on her face. It was a welcome change, but it was also a natural one. Thanks to a little _For Dummies_ book, Audrey had created a place where other people like her could gather together and discuss issues involving the strange incidents they had been victimized by.

She had something to truly be proud of again.

(…)

_FREAK GIRL_

_GET LOST_

_LIAR _

_LOSER_

_GO AND DIE_

Audrey crumpled the note and tossed it in the garbage can. She shrugged them off as if nothing had happened and moved on to her design engineering class. Once she walked in, Audrey noticed that the class room was oddly quiet despite the fact that most of the kids were known around school for being loud and rude.

That week they were working on wooden cars. Audrey was almost done with the body of her car and only needed to add the axel and the wheels. She walked to the closed where everyone in her period kept their work. Everyone had already gotten their cars since Audrey arrived late.

Hers was snapped in two.

"Teacher!" She moaned.

(…)

"I'm really sorry about what happened to your car" Alex said. He was sanding his car, a bulky but edgy piece of work, next to Audrey, who was cutting her new car with one of the saws. Both of them were wearing safety glasses, but neither really had to yell to hear each other.

"Nah, it's ok. I didn't like how it turned out anyway." Audrey picked up her new car. There were a lot of sharp edges and rough areas, but once she had sanded it down it would be simple and sleek.

"With all that's happened lately, I'm amazed that you've managed to keep up such a good mood."

"The key is to find something positive to focus on," Audrey said as she put her car on the sanding machine. Within a few minutes her car was almost the same as the ruined one—before it was ruined.

"So guess what?" Alex asked.

"What?"

"James Patterson is doing a book signing at my friend's bookstore tonight! He should be there at eight."

Audrey nearly dropped her car. "You're kidding! Dude, I've got, like, twenty of his books!"

"I can assure you that we'll be the first to get his autograph. _If_ you come with me."

"Sure! I'll meet you there, like, right after sundown!" Audrey exclaimed.

Audrey spent the rest of the day thinking about what she would say to one of her favorite authors—the mastermind behind one of her biggest female role models, Maximum Ride. Even before she came to New York, Audrey had loved the fast-paced, action-packed tales of the six children on the run from their former captors. Back when she was still cutting herself off, Audrey would read the books and use Max's hardships as her strength. She would imagine what Max would do in her position, and it was never mope around or act emo.

Of course, Max always had her Flock of fellow modified humans to support her. Audrey had always been jealous of that.

Now Audrey had many people who could relate to her from all over the world to support her.

Once it started to get dark, she ran into her home, up to her room, emptied her backpack of anything pertaining to school, filled it with every James Paterson novel Audrey owned (including the several manga adaptations) and skipped out of her home.

A muscular blonde boy with amber eyes was at the door. He was wearing the gray pants and blue blazer that acted as her school's male uniform. Audrey recognized him as Tony Adams, captain of the football team.

"Can I help—?"

He grabbed Audrey by her collar and hoisted her up several inches off of the ground so they were face-to-face. The terrifying idea of another victim of possession crossed Audrey's mind.

"It's all your fault, you stupid bitch!" He hissed. "I can't stand you. Now take back what you said about Ed!"

Another hater…

"Take it back!" Tony shouted.

Audrey sighed and calmly got him to let go. She gently pushed him out of the way and kept on walking towards the bookstore. After a few minutes she was amongst the crowds—_they_ were amongst the crowds. He hadn't given up.

"Why won't you just take back what you said about Ed? We all know you're lying!" Tony hissed.

Audrey _wanted_ to come back with a witty retort. She _wanted_ to tell him the truth. She _wanted_ to shut him up. But she wouldn't.

"Why would you say something like that about Ed? Was it for attention? You really make me sick." He grabbed onto Audrey's arm. "If you don't fess up right now then I'll make your life at school a living night—"

"Mare? No. You won't. Because, quite frankly, for going to my house I can press trespassing charges. For saying everything you just said I can go to the school and have you referred for threatening me! So if you give a crap about your chances of getting into a halfway decent college, _you'll back o_…"

Tony wasn't looking at her. He was looking around, completely wide-eyed. Audrey broke away and did the same.

They were completely alone.

Although a little unsettled, Audrey _was_ originally from the suburbs, so this wasn't nearly as strange—shocking even—to her as it was to Tony. After all, it was after dark. But it was still strange.

Audrey, shrugging it off as a strange occurrence, kept on walking. Realizing that Troy's amazement at the empty street left him in a daze, Audrey smiled; she had gotten away from that self-righteous moron. Audrey had been raised to never take the law into her own hands—unless witnessing a crime in progress or something of that nature, obviously.

"WHAT THE F—?"

Audrey stopped in her tracks and turned around.

"Oh what is it no—OH GOD!" She cried.

In front of Troy, there was a clearly injured man lying on the street. The man lifted his head, let out a weak moan, and let his head drop to the ground.

The first thought that crossed Audrey's mind was how dirty the street was and his face connecting to it. The second turned into words:

"Hurry up and call an ambulance!"

Audrey ran over to the man, turned him on his back, and checked his pulse as Tony pounded away on his cell phone. His shirt was darkened by a warm liquid. He was bleeding.

"There's no damned signal!" He growled.

Audrey pulled out her phone and did the same. She didn't have a signal either. She thought about what she should do.

"Grab his legs!" Audrey shouted.

"What?"

"I'll grab his shoulders, you grab his legs. We can take him to my house and see if the land lines are working."

For a moment Audrey saw a flicker of anger and disgust in Troy's eyes. He probably hated the thought of "helping" the girl that said "such awful things" about his friend


	5. Aiden

**OH MY GOD, I had the most massive case of writers' block when it came to this fic! I was going to write something similar to **_**A Certain Magical Index**_**, but then it wouldn't have the same feel as the usual works in the **_**Megami Tensei**_** series. Then I picked up this INGENIOUS manga called **_**Maoh: Juvenile Remix**_**. Now I have all the inspiration I need! It was hard changing the pathway that I had already set the story on, but I came up with a good idea!**

**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing pertaining to the **_**Megami Tensei**_** franchise. **

**An Ugly yet Beautiful World**

Chapter Five

"Set him on the couch!" Audrey ordered.

Tony did so without protest as she ran upstairs. When Audrey let him down her hand caught on something, but she just tore it away and kept on going, all the while clenching her phone in her skirt pocket and waiting for any signs that it had a signal.

"Where are you going?" Tony asked in an incredulous tone.

"Going to get our first aid kit!" She shouted back.

Audrey did just that, came back down the stairs, and leapt to the man's side.

"Take the pillow and put some pressure on those wounds while I get the gauze out." She ordered.

First, Audrey had Tony place several thick rags she had gotten from the kitchen over the man's wounds. She then took the gauze and tightly wrapped them around the man's torso, right arm, and left leg—where the wounds were the deepest. Finally, she took the medical tape and sealed her work.

"Where did you learn all of this?" Tony asked.

"Those TV shows that tell you what to do in emergency situations—but that doesn't matter. I checked the phones and even the land lines aren't working. Check your phone again!" She ordered.

They both did so.

Neither got a signal.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God—w-what should we do?" Tony asked.

"You stay here—watch him and keep on changing those bandages. I'm going to go run out and get help."

Audrey told Tony where her family's other emergency supplies (her father was a little paranoid) were and ran out the door, slamming it shut behind her as she ran screaming into the night.

(…)

Where was he? Where was the damned bastard? They had beaten the guy to a bloody pulp. Somehow he managed to get away. Maybe the bastard used some of that weirdo power—maybe powers like Aiden's? Either way, all they had to do was get the freak back, beat him some more, take that whatever-it-was, and head back to Aiden.

"Split," his buddy said.

Split loved the name. He got it when he took out a corporate bastard with a metal pipe—split the ass's head open. From that point on everyone called him Split, and Split kept the very same metal pipe with him. Split could kick ass and that was all that mattered. The one person whose head he couldn't split open with his prized weapon was the greatest man walking the Earth, the man that had spared Split's life, Aiden.

"You really think that no one's gonna show?" The buddy asked.

Split's other buddies behind him all muttered stuff that sounded a lot like questioning Aiden.

"How many times do I have to tell you? Aiden's not a normal guy. He can do stuff! No one's gonna s—"

"SOMEBODY!" A girl screamed.

Everyone in his group fell silent.

"HEEEELP!" She screamed.

"What should we do, Split?" One buddy hissed.

A girl in a school uniform turned a corner; she was kinda cute, too.

"You guys go an' hide—put your masks on too. Come out when I give ya the signal."

(…)

Audrey rounded a corner and ran into a tall, Caucasian man wearing baggy jeans and a black hooded jacket. A parent would have looked at his tattooed arm and greased hair and asked him what he was doing out dressed like that after dark, but Audrey wasn't an adult to begin with.

"Guy—really badly hurt!" She gasped. "Phones aren't working!"

For a minute his eyes widened, and Audrey caught the slightest hint of joy in his eyes. He quickly became serious.

"Take me to 'em! I know first aid!"

Audrey led the man back to her house. As she told him where she and Tony had found him and what they did to treat his wounds, he nodded and praised their fast actions in a show of his knowledge for proper procedure in this kind of a situation. Once inside, he came to the man's side and began to do what seemed like checking his vitals.

"Dude, did you see anyone else?" Tony asked. "I, like already checked his pulse. Do you know why the streets were so deserted?" Tony asked as he put his hand on the man's shoulder.

And in the split second before he leapt up, Audrey realized something. Right before he hit Tony—right before the door was broken down and everything went black, she realized that he wasn't checking the man's vitals. He was _searching_ for something.

(…)

_You chose your fate…_

_You have even _greater_ power than before…_

_Now call us..._

_Use the Door_

_The door of the Megami…_

_Use the door, Audrey!_

_We won't wait forever, Audrey!_

_Audrey!_

"AUDREY!"

Audrey leapt up and immediately fell flat on her face.

She had been lying precariously on a pile of empty cardboard boxes. Her sudden movement caused the flimsy structure to collapse beneath her.

Tony and Audrey were in some kind of storeroom. The walls were gray concrete, lacking in any paint or furnishings, save for the bare light hanging from a wire. There were several stacks of boxes, a ventilation duct, and a door.

"Where are we?" Audrey asked. She noticed that Tony's face was streaked with blood. He had taken off his uniform's tie and was holding it to a gash on his head. "Oh my God, Troy!"

She scrambled to her classmate's side, took the tie, and wrapped it around his head as he explained what happened.

"The dude you brought in used a stun gun on you. A bunch of his friends came in—they were all wearing skull masks. One of them hit me with some kind of bat or something."

"I'm so sorry!" Audrey moaned. "This is all my fault! I just told the first guy I saw on the street what was up, he said he knew first aid, and I believed him! This is New York, damn it! Not flipping Pleasantville! We got mugged! Because of me!"

"Hey, hey, hey." Tony began. "This isn't your fault. Most people—even me—would have done the same thing if they were in the same place. I should have been able to protect you—I'm the guy here."

Audrey kept how sexist she felt that statement was to herself.

"Oh my God!" She exclaimed. "The guy! W-w-where's the guy?"

"When I woke up he wasn't here." Tony said calmly.

Audrey moaned, pulled her knees to her chest, and sat down next to Tony.

She could feel the sorrow taking hold again. Audrey had fought off the sorrow by using the praise she received from other people with the Phantom App on her site. They had thanked her, told her how wonderful it was to have a safe place for conversing, free of ridicule. She felt that she had a true reason to live again, that there were people who _truly_ wanted her to be alive besides those that were morally obligated to. The shock, terror, and sheer hopelessness of the situation she was in destroyed all of that.

"What about our phones?" She gasped.

"I already checked. They took 'em."

Audrey subconsciously ignored the statement as she checked her skirt pocket.

"I have my phone!" She gasped.

Tony cheered and pumped a fist into the air as Audrey turned her phone on. The pentagram-like mar appeared on screen before it went back to a normal page full of apps. It didn't take a problem-solver like Audrey to realize that the Phantom App had something to do with her phone returning to her pocket. She thought that it might have been like _Percy Jackson and the Olympians._ The main character, Percy Jackson, had a magical sword disguised as a pen that would return to his pocket no matter how far away it was from him.

"And there's no signal…" She moaned.

Tony dropped to the floor and groaned. Audrey did the same and stared up at the ceiling.

She thought about using the App. But according to the website, it only worked when there was a Monster nearby, and its power was still limited at that. Audrey collapsed after defeating Ed. She would only make the situation worse if she just blasted the door down, collapsed, and left Tony to deal with a bunch of manic thugs while carrying an unconscious girl.

Then she saw the air vent. Audrey saw the air vent and got to work.

Tony, however, was also trapped in a state of despair, and was too depressed to noticed what his fellow captive was up to.

"Listen, Audrey…" he began. "Earlier…I was being such a jack a—"

"A little bit higher!" Audrey squealed.

As Tony had been searching for the right words, Audrey had been arranging the cardboard boxes in a more stable structure. She closed all the tops, tossed the small and crushed ones aside, and even managed to create a bit of a stairwell for climbing.

"How…did you?" Tony gasped.

Audrey smirked. "I'm more than just looks, ya know. But one of us is going to have to give the other a boost."

"Who's lighter?" Tony asked.

Audrey was about to coldly say that she had lost a lot of weight recently—stress will do that to anyone not taking anti-depressants—but Tony simply went to the top and knelt down. Audrey smiled and climbed up, tore the top of the vent, and climbed in. Before she left, she leaned her hand out to Tony.

"What are you waiting for?" She asked.

"You can't lift me."

"Don't give up. I'm stronger than I look!"

"No, Audrey. I'm heavier than I look—you'd have to bench like 250 to be able to get me up there."

Audrey sighed. "Once I get one bar, I'm calling the police." Audrey leapt back in.

"Wait! Before you go!" Audrey stuck her head back out. "S-sorry for being such a jerk earlier. I…was wrong about you. If we get out of this, I'm gonna kick the crap out of anyone that says anything bad about you."

"_Once_ we get out of this." She said with a smile.

(…)

He stared at the low-life street rats. Some smoked—certainly not cigarettes—while others bragged about breaking the law and doing awful things to people that were simply members of minority groups. They claimed that they did nothing wrong, that they were smarter than the fools that got into accidents and got caught, and that they had every right to act the way they acted.

It sickened him.

"Hey, so what's our next job?" He stared at the man's—boy's, really—greased hair and tattoos, with a metal pipe at his side.

He chuckled as it all burst into bloody wounds, the boy screaming.

(…)

Every few feet, Audrey would check her phone for bars. Every time she saw none, she cursed. The process went on for a good fifteen minutes before she gave up and decided to just find an exit. Audrey wasn't going to go screaming for help again; she made that mistake one too many times. She'd look for a family or a police car—people that were trustworthy.

She nearly screamed when she found moonlight shining through an air vent.

Audrey scrambled to the end, kicked out the cover, and burst into the night. She breathed in the refreshing air. It was musty, but not nearly as musty as it was back inside of that empty room. She could hear cars in the distance. Cars meant people, people meant help, help meant rescue, and rescue meant redemption.

Audrey bolted forward!

And stopped dead in her tracks.

Audrey stared at the ocean of red before her. She stared for what felt like an eternity before she fell to her knees and began to gag.

She could smell the death and decay all around her—the stink that loomed around the site of a tragedy. Audrey knew it from only once before in her life. Now she had seen the same kind of horror twice, only the second time was far, far worse.

Somehow, Audrey came to her feet and gathered the strength to look again—to find a flicker of life or hope amongst the bloodbath.

All she saw was a man with short, gossamer white hair and eyes that were an otherworldly blue. The man looked at her and smirked.

"Poor girl." He was probably only a few years older than Audrey. Why would he address her like that? "In the wrong place, at the wrong time, only trying to do what was right."

He stepped forward, and Audrey stepped back.

"If only there were more like you." He said as he opened his arms. "You have witnessed the beginning of a revolution."

Audrey took another step back as he stretched his arm out to her.

"Come and change the world with me, dear child."

Audrey shook her head and took another step back.

"Scared?" He asked. "Don't be."

"W-who are you?" Audrey stammered. "_Who are you_?" She bellowed.

"Who am I?" The man swept a smear of blood away from his silvery, gossamer hair, and licked the reddened finger.

"I am Aiden."


End file.
